Thursday, March 27, 2008

VA Pays for Waterboarding


According to the Navy Times, Veterans Affairs decided to pay for medical treatment of a veteran who underwent waterboarding as a part of Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training. The vet will receive counseling for PTSD and medication.

When will people have the courage to denounce the use of torture? Advocates of its use have but one dubious utilitarian argument for its justification: the information that it could potentially produce will potentially save more lives than the ones it will ruin. In its most callous formulation the previous argument substitutes a single American life for "saved lives." After all, if one has committed to torture, then one has committed to the abject devaluation of at least one life to glean information that only might be true, may not be valuable, and may save none. In other words, what makes torture such a horrible transaction is that the price of admission to the event must be paid with no knowledge of the contents of the mind of the person the torturer has committed to breaking. The economics of torture sets the cost to be the minds of men on the basis of a hunch, a guess, a grotesque hope that something valuable will be learned to retroactively justify that rueful price.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Too Long a Hiatus

For those of you who don't know, I have a new baby. Unfortunately, she seems alien to a natural talent for sleeping, so we have been trying to cultivate skills where those talents may have resided.

Stop back periodically to check for updates.

Hope to write to everyone soon.